With the transition to electronic health records mandated by the US government, healthcare providers must invest heftily to make the switch. Including a mobility solution can turn a big EHR investment into an even bigger return.
When the government enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) in February in order to stimulate the economy and invest in infrastructure, it set aside incentive funds for healthcare providers implementing a government-certified electronic health records (EHR) system. With a total of $147.7 billion allocated to healthcare and $19 billion pegged specifically for health information technology (HIT), the Act evidences a move toward real improvements in healthcare quality.
According to the recent PricewaterhouseCoopers US report “Rock and a Hard Place: An analysis of the $36 billion impact from Health IT stimulus funding,” ARRA includes the goal of modernizing healthcare and reducing long-term costs through the use of information technology. Despite these well-intentioned ambitions, many healthcare organizations will likely find difficulty in coming up with the necessary funding to purchase EHR systems, comply with the government standards and make sure their system works well with others. Overall, the Act will have the most benefit for organizations with EHR systems already in place because theirs will be closer to the “interoperablility standards,” thereby receiving the most funding.
As the title of the PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggests, the plan sets aside a $36 billion stimulus package for early adopters of the government-certified systems and it has admirable objectives. President Barack Obama stated in his joint address to Congress this year, “Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down cost, ensure privacy and save lives.” In order to put the plan in motion, the HITECH Act pushes physicians to adopt an EHR system by offering incentive payments to those who do and later reducing Medicare payments to those who do not.
Yet even with the benefit of stimulus incentives, most healthcare organizations will find for the short-term, they are on the losing end of the equation. Government funding will not immediately offset the cost of implementing the system. However, one good – or better – piece of news hails from the IT mobility sector. Experts in IT mobility suggest that adding mobility solutions to existing and new EHR systems can make the difference in showing return on investment sooner rather than later. The trick is to locate a mobility solution that is efficient and cost-effective to implement.
“Implementing an electronic health records system is just the first step,” according to Yves Neidlinger, National Channel Manager for Navara, an international company specializing in middleware mobility solutions. “Providing users with patient information regardless of their location or type of device is another. No wonder most EHR providers are already looking for technologies to mobilize their applications.”
Despite the fact that using an EHR can reduce errors and make access to shared information easier, healthcare providers cite funding as an obstacle to implementing a new system. The ARRA provides funds to healthcare providers that implement a government-certified EHR system because in order to make EHRs the most beneficial to the US healthcare system overall, most healthcare organizations would need to be using these interoperable systems. Obviously, the switch across the sector cannot occur overnight.
When the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information (ONC) surveyed healthcare providers who had already implemented an EHR system, the findings showed that initially gains in efficiency were limited by a slowdown during the implementation of the system. Additionally, funds and time were required to train staff and maintain the system. The survey showed that overall, providers did not receive financial benefit from instigating an EHR system. Financial benefits have a better chance of occurring among large healthcare institutions. Nonetheless, these systems do bring healthcare to a better level. “Limiting or getting rid of paper forms and documents generates a huge move toward efficiency,” says Elias Crum, Navara Vice President. “It saves on paper, people, expensive transposition and typographical errors.”
Government Incentives Will Not Cover Costs of EHR Implementation
While there is no question whether EHR systems will lead to big gains for the US healthcare system overall, the PricewaterhouseCoopers US report explains that the incentives won’t actually cover the costs of implementing the system. Still, with Medicare reimbursement penalties for those who do not comply and a deadline of 2015, healthcare providers don’t have much choice other than to get on the IT ball.
Unfortunately, PricewaterhouseCoopers says that the stimulus finding for health IT is a “small carrot” compared to the amount of resources it will take to get the technology up and running in time. Providers who do not use government-certified EHRs by 2015 will face penalties.
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ analysis shows that the stimulus incentives to comply with the new requirements for setting up and maintaining EHRs do not come near to compensating the overall costs. When added to the possibility of future penalties from reduced Medicare reimbursement, the situation becomes more extreme. Medicare penalties will begin in 2015 and be fully implemented by 2017.
Physicians can receive up to $44,000 each for adopting certified EHR systems, but their overall costs will exceed these incentives. PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates a total cost range for a three-physician practice at $173,750 to $296,000. Considering the hefty upfront investment of implementing an EHR system, adding a mobility solution from a middleware provider can make the expense more cost-effective in the long run, but also bring faster benefits in the short term.
Mobility Solutions Add Efficiency and Financial Benefit to EHR System
“Not only do healthcare providers want access to real-time data anytime from anywhere, but they also want the additional subsidies from the US government for doing it,” says Neidlinger. An EHR solution alone can reduce administration costs by up to 50 percent, but taking that EHR mobile allows multiple providers to quickly and easily access the records. This greatly increases the return on investment.
“If a doctor accesses a patient record from a PC, that’s a certain dollar savings,” says Neidlinger. “If the doctor gets that same information from an iPhone or Windows Mobile Device, that’s an additional savings.” Working with a middleware product like the Navara Mobility Suite allows the EHR system to become mobile with virtually no development time because the applications have already been created and are continuously updated to work with new software and hardware. Mobility makes the upfront cost of implementing an EHR system, a move toward both time and cost efficiency.
Navara’s Leading Mobility TechnologyRather than a healthcare software provider creating a mobility solution from scratch, working with a middleware mobility provider can make adding the technology simple and fast. While it could take many months and thousands of dollars for a software company to write new code, and plenty of man-hours to keep that code updated, Navara’s mobility solutions are easy to implement because they are already created and are updated continuously. Navara provides middleware solutions that can easily mobilize any EHR systems onto handheld devices. Since Navara’s solutions work with any Smartphone like BlackBerry or iPhone, integration requires no changes to existing applications. With a Navara mobility solution, ISV and OEM partners can avoid timely and costly software development. Navara’s ease of customization means the middleware product is invisible to the end user – the healthcare providers who are spending time and money implementing the costly EHR systems. Navara stands out in the mobile application development arena through its uncommonly easy to deploy technology platform.
“Overall there is a trend to mobilize applications in order to work more efficiently, thereby saving time and money,” said Neidlinger. “Navara offers a platform to software manufacturers that helps them develop a mobile extension of their product very easily.”
Navara’s Mobility Suite provides a low cost, high performance platform to extend the reach of applications to mobile workers. Navara can implement a mobile version of almost any application for a fraction of the cost of traditional development. Even better, the new mobile interface can be operational within a matter of hours.
Navara’s mission is to support all major mobile devices and integration technologies. Through constant development, Navara is able to support the latest mobile devices, operating systems, networks and hardware. This commitment ensures that Navara’s partners will continue to be able to offer the best mobile solutions to their customers through the lifecycle of their mobile interface product. Navara has yet to find a software application with which its mobility solution does not work.
Navara Helps Allscripts Clients Generate Immediate Response from Healthcare Providers
Navara recently presented a middleware package to Allscripts that allowed the healthcare software company to offer its clients enormous savings in response time. By using the OEM package from Navara, Allscripts was able to quickly make their Referral Management solution available via Smartphone or BlackBerry, which translates into immediate response time between post-acute healthcare providers and the hospitals they serve. Because they used Navara’s existing toolkit, Allscripts avoided the need to develop a mobile version of their own, which would have been a time-consuming and costly effort.
“The benefit really is to the customers I am serving,” said Greg Thurau, Vice President Product Management of Allscripts. “Using a Smartphone, post-acute care providers can receive and review electronic hospital referrals and respond back to the hospital right away.” Since the response time is shortened, the hospital is able to discharge the patient more quickly, leading to an improved relationship between the extended care provider and the hospital as well as efficiencies in the patient’s transition from one level of healthcare to the next. Improved efficiency and better patient care are exactly what the HITECH Act was intended to promote.
Navara’s products help independent software vendors in healthcare IT mobilize their existing solutions either through OEM solutions or standard products.
At this year’s Healthcare Information and Management Systems Conference (HIMSS), Neidlinger noticed a trend toward mobility in every aspect of technology in healthcare. “Walking the show floor, I started to notice that increasingly healthcare is becoming mobile,” he said. “Virtually all of the vendors either had a mobile offering or were in the process of planning one. For some companies this meant having mobile tablets that doctors can carry around, while for others it means having access to patient information on a BlackBerrry or iPhone.”
Mobility Solutions Make Vital Step Forward in Future of US Healthcare IT
When considering the EHR options, healthcare organizations are left with little choice but to comply within the next six years. As providers make the sizable investment in an EHR system, they will want to receive all of the benefits possible. By adding a mobility solution upfront, providers can immediately begin to see even more increased efficiency and return on investment. Tapping into the government incentives and avoiding the loss of Medicare benefits are just the beginning of what healthcare IT has to offer providers and patients. Implementing a mobility solution and get providers on a much faster road to HIT success.
Navara stands out in the mobile application development space through its uncommonly easy to deploy technology platform. Founded in 1998, Navara has office throughout The Netherlands, the United States, Germany and Belgium. Navara is a division of RAM Mobile Data. Navara can be reached by calling +1 866-759-5794. Additional information is available at
www.navara.com .
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